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In the Small-Scale Question threat, user @sickamore raised a question about Sudan. Given that it's more global news, but also tangential to culture war narratives, I figured I might raise it here. sickamore did ask for a good low down. Sadly, please accept a bad one because bad news is the easiest to quibble over, and sharing my newest reason to be depressed is supposed to be helpful or something.
Also, forgive the inconsistent citations, these are intended to be handy, not authoritative.
To start with sickamore's question:
To start- this is not a bad question, but it is the wrong question, for a pretty basic reason: this is not about you. Or the US. Or Russia.
What is going in Sudan is a practical demonstration that being a global power does not mean that everything going on in the world is secretly about you. When I've raised in the past in other contexts that a certain sort of American cultural chauvenism that sees everything as an extension of American politics, this is what I refer to. The Sudan crisis has foreign actors and influences, yes, but it is fundamentally an internal political crisis driven by internal actors, with their own interests, their own agency... and their own lack of self-control, because you tend not to shoot at the French diplomatic convoy you already said you were willing to help leave if you have actually good control of your forces.
They don't, because this is Sudan, and Sudan is experiencing the sort of 'the government is the internationally recognized warlords, and the warlords are fighting again' conflict that bedevils foreign policy.
First, to set the context...
For the Americans and others who couldn't find Sudan on a map if they didn't know where to look: Sudan is in Northeast the country between Egypt and Ethiopia at the Horn of Africa, across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia. It's part of the not-great part of Africa.
Sudan has basically been a military junta in one form or another since the 90s, and not the western-backed sort, though over the last few years there's been a detente of sort since a new military junta came to power and more or less offered to help normalize relations.
Here's a wiki summary, but the super high level feel free to quibble is-
In 1989, the political system of Sudan was "rigorously restructured" following a military coup when Omar al-Bashir, then a brigadier in the Sudanese Army, led a group of officers and ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi. Under al-Bashir's leadership, the new military government suspended political parties and introduced an Islamic legal code on the national level.
In the 2000s and 2010s, there was a war in Darfur you might have heard about due to the various crimes against humanity and horrific humanitarian crisis and stuff. The militia that fought on the Sudanese government side are broadly grouped/affiliated with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and are accused of war crimes. 'Crimes against Humanity' war crimes.
What you might not have known is that there is gold in those killing fields, and naturally the side with the militia to control the gold gets to profit. The RSF starts to take off as a political force, and an economic force, due to control of the gold. It also branches off to other profitable ventures, like mercenary work. Anyone familiar with the international overlap of gold interests and mercenary work may recognize some similarities with certain Russian interest groups. Yes, there is a Russian connection. But back to history.
On April 11, 2019, al-Bashir and his government were overthrown in a military coup led by his first vice president and defense minister, who then established the now ruling military junta, led by Lt. General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan. The RSF under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, often known as Hemetti, supported Burhan in the coup and suppressing post-coup protests, including the Khartoum massacre.
After the 2019 coup, Sudan’s government was led by the Sovereign Council, a military-civilian body that is the highest power in the transitional government. Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok is the civilian leader of the cabinet. This means he is not actually the leader. The Chairman of the Sovereignty Council is General Abdel Fattah Burhan of the SAF, who is backed by Hemetti, leader of the RSF.
In October 2020, Sudan made an agreement to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel, as part of the agreement the United States removed Sudan from the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
On 25 October 2021, the Sovereignty Council and the Sudanese government were immensely dissolved after being overthrown in the 2021 Sudan coup.
Surprise surprise, the leader to come out on top again is... General Burhan of the SAF, backed by Hemetti and the RSF.
Which brings us closer to present. As part of broader western normalization and diplomatic rehabilitation, the premise of Sudan politics is that it isn't an indefinite permanent military junta, but a transition government that will, eventually, place the military under civilian rule.
This will naturally be a long and arduous process, but western support actually does demand the military itself to be consolidated, so that things like the Darfure crisis and the humanitarian castrophe that supports mass migration not happen. Which means that the Sudan Armed Forces would need to reign in and control the paramilitary militia of the Rapid Support Forces, who have a nasty history of suppressing. Which means that the RSF, rather than being an autonomous power broker with great autonomy, would be controlled by the Sudanese military, and General Burhan. Who- if he controls the RSF- would also control what the RSF controls. Like, say, gold mines.
Naturally, RSF Commander Hemetti is a patriot and a self-admitted supporter of civilian government rule, which is why earlier this month he allegedly* attempted to coup General Burhan.
I say allegedly here, because Hemetti claimed it was really Burhan and the SAF who did dirty first, but I will note that the RSF took a couple hundred Egyptian soldiers prisoner in the first day(s) of the war, which tends not to be the sort of thing that you do on accident if you're just responding.
(It does, however, make quite a sense if you have pre-meditated intent to coup the close ally/partner of the regional military partner, and thus throw one of the few military powers capable of intervening against you into a decision paralysis that keeps them from intervening against you.).
Note that this is all very western centric, and doesn't include things like how Egypt and Sudan are oriented against the Ethiopian Grand Renaissance Dam, only mentioned the gold and russian connection when I went off script, and doesn't even touch the various arab world implications. This is just a really, really ugly history.
Here's the Dean Summary:
In 1989, there was a coup. The military junta styled itself in islamic theocracy.
In the 2000s/2010s, Sudan was a pariah state that made itself infamous in the Darfur conflict, where the RSF was a tool of suppression and humanitarian atrocities using paramilitary militia.
In the 2010s, the RSF got rich and powerful off of using its paramilitary militia to seize control of gold and other economic interests in Darfur.
In 2019, there was a new military coup led by General Burhan of the SAF, who was supported by Dagalo, leader of the paramilitary RSF. The new government ingratiates itself with the west by relaxing from the pariah policies.
In 2021, General Burhan of the SAF launches another coup, again with the support of Dagalo and the RSF. The new new government sustains western toleration/acceptance by going through negotiations of a transition to civilian government.
In 2022, western attention / negotiations for negotiation focus on consolidating the military under future civilian control. This includes consolidating the RSF under SAF control, which in turn means control of the gold and economic interests Hemetti had built up.
In April 2023, a week and a half ago, Hemetti and the RSF attempted a coup against General Burhan and the SAF with an attempted takeover of the capital of Khartoum. It failed to oust him, and the conflict looks ready to go into a sustained civil war with massive humanitarian implications.
That was an ugly history. I'll give an even worse response to the original question next.
This was a very interesting read and impressively substantiated. Getting even a brief glimpse of the decrepit and forgotten corners of human existence remind me of everything I'm grateful for in my comfy life.
Every day that I feel angst about being an Indian in India, I remember to be thankful that at least I'm not African.
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Thanks for the rundown! Very informative!
The only reason I brought up the US/Russian angle (and really why I wanted to learn more) is that there's been some posts on twitter around how Victoria Nuland (USA) had visited (though I couldn't find a trace of that in 2023), and that the US Ambassador to Sudan made some statement warning against Sudan giving a red sea port to Russia (now looking for more sources, I cannot find this interview either, only quotes of it - let me know if anyone finds the original!)
So maybe it's just anti-american trolls drumming attention to some conspiracy and there's no real backing in reality. Still learned a lot from your posts and links. Thanks.
I mean you should take this write up with a grain of salt as Dean is pretty openly a pro US neocon, who regularly argues pretty loudly for US foreign military interests. Before I get dogpiled just read their posting history, it's almost all they comment on while staying out of all the other juicy western culture war topics the rest of us are suckers for. All countries involved in proxy wars have their own internal issues and politics that factor.
On the other hand there are 3 places in the world in which Russia has / plans to have a foreign naval base. Sevastopol in Crimea, Tartus in Syria and a planned base in Sudan. Syria was clearly a proxy war, Ukraine is, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
The red sea sees a trillion dollars pass through each year and is of huge geostrategic importance. I think the 1st and only foreign naval base China has in in Djibouti. So there is plenty of incentive for the US to be manipulating things behind the scenes. Even if they haven't clearly backed a specific separatist force yet.
Look, pointing out someone's historical bias towards a particular point of view is legitimate (to a point), but repeating throughout the thread "This guy is a neocon shill, therefore you should dismiss his argument" (without even bothering to explain how he's wrong), not so much. And nobody needs to post on every topic to have credibility on the topics they do post about.
I thought it was clear that I don't think he is wrong he is just being misleading. Like a magician that draws attention to something else while they put a card in your pocket or w/e. He's infodumping a lot of factual information that is true, but leaving out that there are some pretty big incentives for foreign powers that are currently not on best of terms to be getting involved. And also the nature of these situations means that the bare facts are never the whole story. Countries just don't announce to the public their coup attempts or w/e. Unless it's on accident or leaked it's not information that ever gets out. So I felt it needed context.
I mean he's wrong on other things like Syria not being a US proxy war, but that was further down thread and not part of the initial post.
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I guess we can't sneeze without destabilizing a region that Putin's eyeballing. Or at least getting blamed for it.
Maybe if you hadn't spent the last 30 years destabilizing every region (including your own country) for pure greed people would have a bit more trust?
It is a bit surprising that we’re not the ones openly invading for once.
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I'm sure this is based on a well founded history of posting despite my being on the opposite advocacy side of pretty much every neocon-endorsed war of the last 25 years, and not at all trying to smuggle in pejoratives because of my long-established contempt of Putin and regular disagreements with the Russian apologists or tankie types on matters of historical objectivity or international dynamic characterization.
What makes this funny is that the very last person to reference me did so for... my media reviews at the old site, which were far more forthcoming because the Reddit-motte did more culture-media talk in the main forum, and because Reddit was where I already was more often for my other hobbies, and where I still spend most of my time.
'Just read their posting history' is a basic information input error, because if you read the posting history I still have from the Reddit, you'll see I'm often not here because of time I spend instead on video games. Reading this forum post history wouldn't indicate that, nor would it indicate the job changes or other life actions. Nor would it reflect how the discussion of the Motte has changed since the migration, with an increase of topics (especially chatGPT and AI) that I have never expressed particular interest in. Nor would it reflect my own attempts to change how much time I spend on this forum for other reasons, which in turn would drive changes in what material I spend time on. Nor would it various real-life reasons I have been offline in general for the last few months.
Yes, I find international politics more interesting than chatGPT or AI recursion. I find the conflicts between actually different cultures the most part of a culture-discussion forum with an international spread of participants. I also have more experience on inter-cultural, as opposed to intra-cultural conflicts, and especially those related to military-government relations, than most. I find these subjects interesting, and when the topic comes up I'll chime in if someone asks a question or says something I think obfusicates more than informs. On topics like AI which I find less interesting, I've expressed my views in the past, and moved on to let more passionate people continue with the things they find.
The distinction is that cultural chauvinists are self-centered to a degree that they act or believe that their interests and influence are what dominate other people's conflicts. They do this in a variety of ways, such as characterizing domestic power grabs between warlords as foreign proxy wars which remove agency outside of the local actors and reframe conflicts so that local actors are of secondary importance and can be generalized and brushed away.
I have a long pattern of viewing this sort of framing as analytical malpractice.
Then I would posit you should probably learn what a goose is, because that's not a duck.
This is where I refer back to my point about the sort of cultural chauvenism that tries to make other people's conflicts about the US. Syria was indeed a proxy war... but not between the US and Russia. Syria was an excellent example of the practical implications of the Obama-era policy of trying to off-shore the middle east and lead-from-behind so that the US would have a less direct role, which in turn led to the Turks and the Arabs and the Iranians all taking the lead and setting conditions that the US then reacted to. Syria pre-ISIS was an excellent case study in how minor and middle powers compete to shape the action, or inaction, of a larger outside power, with various parties trying to draw in the US, and others to keep it out, and how varying degrees of support and sympathy can be elicited or hindered. The formal American intervention in Syria was not because of, in response to, or a result of Russia- it was a result of local actors, specifically ISIS, who themselves were not a result of Russia or the cause of Russia's own intervention.
If someone wanted to raise Syria as a proxy war between Russia and Turkey or Saudi Arabia for control of the Mediterranean port, that would be a defensible line of argument. Unlike the US, which infamously backed down from Obama's own red line and was in fits over what sort of aid it could give anyone, the Turks actually tried to overthrow the Assad regime. They provided far more significant military aid to those they judged most directly supporting, they provided operational safe havens, and they repeatedly considered- and actually did- directly intervene to keep their proxies in the fight. The Arabs attempted similar, and it was precisely their favored groups that got the most resistance from within the US government. The Americans puttered rather than come to a policy decision of what goals to pursue, and ultimately let the Arabs and the Turks take the lead until ISIS overran north-western Iraq.
A framing that tries to fit Syria into a broader US-Russia competition makes sense from a Russian perspective, because the Russians are fixated on the US like that, but it doesn't actually reflect the actors of relative import on the ground, or even the American perspective. To Russia, something like the the battle of Khasham may occur because it is in a proxy war with the US and the US has it out to get them. To the United States, something like the battle of Khasham can occur because, to quote Mattis, "The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people, and my direction to the chairman was for the force, then, to be annihilated. And it was."
Notably, Khasham is about as far from the Syrian coast as you can be. An American attempt to drive the Russians off the sea board it was not.
This is an example of combining banalities with conspiratorial lack of analysis. The Red Sea is indeed very important- but a naval base is not a 'turn off all trade for a year' button, the horn of Africa is a region where the Americans have supported other militaries developing a naval presence to deal with piracy such as the Somali pirate surge years ago, and the Djibouti dynamics are so different from the Sudan dynamics in international affairs terms that this is an heavy-handed motte and bailey.
Moreover, it supports no claim, or counter-claim, in Sudan. 'The US has an incentive to manipulate' is not a substitute for 'the US was manipulating things from behind the scenes,' particularly when ongoing US 'manipulation' was open, overt, and internationally coordinated negotiations... which have been derailed by the recent coup.
This is pejorative in search of an accusation, which I condemn on grounds of obscuring actual truth-seeking, and more to the point its pejorative style that fixates on the US to the eclipsing of other equally or even more relevant actors, like the Europeans- who have reorganized their Africa policy on migrant flow terms- or the Saudis- who were one of the few groups close to the pre-2019 coup government which supported them in Yemen- and others.
I find this bad foreign policy analysis. I don't object to it on neocon grounds- I object to it because I find the arguments sophomoric.
Formal has a lot of meaning resting on it. The CIA was funnelling weapons and funds to Syrian rebels before ISIS was even a thing, back in 2012 and (it is argued) 2011. They exploited the collapse of Libya (another US operation) to send arms from Libyan caches to Syria.
Christopher Phillips, The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East, (Yale University Press, 2016), 139, 143
The goal was to topple Assad from day 1. The US was egging the Turks on, helping the inept Saudis administrate their own proxy war. Besides, who stands behind Qatar and Saudi Arabia anyway, who supplies the arms they sent on? Qatar is not known for its flourishing domestic arms industry.
Furthermore, there's a long history of US involvement in Sudan, they've been bombing and sanctioning and harassing and providing aid to Sudan for decades. It's not so much that the US has an incentive in manipulating, it's that the US has been, is and will continue to manipulate and mess with Sudan.
Leaving small countries on the other side of the world to their own devices - impossible challenge for America!
Qatar and Saudi are, however, known for having a lot of money to spend on arms, and pursuing their own regional interests. This goes back to eclipsing other party's agencies by attributing their agency to the US as a puppet-master, as opposed to alignment of interests.
Few, if anyone, in the US were going to sympathisize with Assad. But no one in the US government had the institutional consensus to actually determine a goal. 'Topple Assad' is not an end-goal in US policy terms, it is a means to the end, but that lack of clear end-state is what kept the Americans indecisive even as the Turks and the Saudis actually funeled what they could as they could. If 'topple Assad' was the goal, the US military could have acted, the US aid could have centered to specific groups, the US support for Saudi or Ankara could have expanded rather than throttled over islamic extremist concerns.
Note the transfer of the subject of what is actually being discussed. Gone is discussion of the specific conflict in Sudan, going on right now- now this is a general 'the US is present and has an influence,' and more than that a conflation of all sorts of measures of interaction as a commonality rather than a series of different relationship states and reasons. The US having a presence and an influence was never disputed, however- rather, the relevance of presence to this specific conflict was the argument, which is not actually addressed or challenged by conflating decades of history.
This goes back to the cultural chauvenism of it not all being about the Americans. Lots of people have long history with Sudan. The Americans are not the most relevant part of Sudan. The Americans are not the most relevant party to understand what is going on now. Stop inviting the Americans to live in your headspace free of charge. Other people in other parts of the world are quite capable of making their own bad decisions without it being driven by American influence.
By the standards you set, everyone with any sort of positive and/or negative interaction with Sudan is a form of interference. It's a meaningless jab when you set the bar so low.
It did act - just in an indecisive and ineffectual way and against stronger than expected opposition. There are still US troops in Syria today, doing their best to prevent any complete resolution of the conflict now that Assad has won. US sanctions are preventing most reconstruction work. US aid did eventually settle on the Kurds, who are hated by nearly all their neighbours. This is a perfect example of why interfering in these places is such a bad idea. The more interference you do, the fewer friends you make.
It is not unreasonable to predict that, since the US has been interfering and influencing Sudan for decades, it will continue to do so and use the current crisis (and the arrival of US troops) to increase its interference. Sure, it's appropriate to use troops to get your embassy personnel out but how long are those troops going to stay there?
Yes - it's a small, poor country very far from the US. There is no good reason to be so interested in what happens there. These small, poor and irrelevant countries should be left to their own devices. And the US has been aggressively sanctioning parts of the Al-Burhan government, including the police. They've been trying to undermine it for some time - the US bears some responsibility for the conflict.
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I got through two pages of your post history with every single post (on here, reddit is dead) being a post defending US foreign policy. I have a life man, I can't be expected to spend all of it reading effort posts, and if you want to be seen as not a neocon you really should maybe try and not do everything in your power to appear as a neocon? Sometimes it can be hard to square the image we project to the public with our interior views of ourselves I guess. What label do you prefer? US imperialist? Atlanticist? Someone Russia touched in a no-no spot?
I mean someone in the small scale question thread asks if Sudan is a proxy war, something that could be answered by a simple, "There is a lot of incentive foreign powers could be involved but we can't for sure say this it is or isn't." Instead you write up a 5 page rebuttal on how there is no way the US could possibly be involved in another proxy war after it's history of endless proxy wars, when there are actors involved that are already in proxy wars by info dumping a Wikipedia article on recent Sudanese history.
The problem with this sort of argument and a problem that persists with motte style arguments, is that the information that is most valuable in international relations, is also the information you are least likely to have. Long ass effort post write ups summarizing easily available facts are almost always worthless and the endless gaslighting by the "experts" to trust the bare facts and ignore your "conspiratorial" instincts is obnoxious. Which is why it's terribly misleading to just rattle off a bunch of known facts about recent Sudanese history without pointing out the very obvious incentives foreign actors would have to be involved. Are foreign countries perfectly capable of fucking themselves? Yeah. Do foreign actors often give them a push when it's in their interests? Yeah. In the interconnectedness of the modern world and the power certain states have within it, it's almost impossible for any war to not have at least some hint of proxy war to it. That isn't chauvinism, that's just how power works.
Also, how is Obama letting the middle east handle (offshoring) it's proxy wars not just some inception tier proxy warring?
Bemused at you, mostly.
The last two pages of my posting history are this subject of Sudan, a series of exchanges regarding the Seymour Hersh accusation that the US sabotaged Nord Stream, and a pittance of comments on China. They also go out only two months.
If you consider three conversations across two months enough, okay, but that's being silly, not an argument about being a neocon.
This is an example of you missing the point, and the argument.
No, this is the cultural chauvinism I refer to. Dismissing history that many people don't actually know to propagate a framing that isn't supported by facts on the ground that inflates the importance of external actors certainly makes the Americans seem important to the situation, and their opponents important by contrast for standing up to the mighty foe, but it doesn't, in fact, make the Americans important to the situation.
Agency, and who controls conflicts for what purpose. If you indirectly force or empower someone to wage a conflict they could not, or would not, do without your support, that's a proxy war. If someone wages a conflict they they would want to as long as you were not outright stopping them, that is not a proxy war- that is their own war.
By that definition there has never been and can never be a proxy war, as no one has zero agency, all groups the US has employed in its proxy wars had a choice to say no. Convenient for someone that is such a US foreign policy apologist.
Hm.
It's almost like what was written didn't base it's distinction on zero agency, and you made up a strawman to dismiss instead of addressing arguments actually made about the agency of others to focus on the Americans instead. Imagine that.
As for apologist, yawn. Clearly you've never paid attention to my opinions on various American ventures. Do better.
Because what was written doesn't make sense
If you indirectly force or empower someone to wage a conflict they could not, or would not, do without your support, that's a proxy war.
Let's pick out parts of this by excluding some of the not relevant or's.
If you empower someone to wage a conflict they could not do (wage) without your support, that's a proxy war.
If someone wages a conflict that they would want to as long as you were not outright stopping them, that is not a proxy war.
These statements contradict, the second is too broad. If you're enabling them or encouraging them but they want to do it anyways it's both not a proxy war and a proxy war.
Reduces to basically any conflict in which a powerful foreign country influences the conflict, while w/e party within the state they're enabling wants to wage a conflict, not being a proxy war. So nothing can be a proxy war as long as you can find some faction within a country that doesn't like current leadership.
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I have to say, it's amusing to me the way pro-Russian/anti-American people online have turned Victoria Nuland into the modern-day Bismarck, able to take down governments and change the political winds with a single visit.
This is a pretty obvious weakman. The steelman is that Nuland being involved in an region is indictative of larger US interest and involvement in the region, of which Nuland herself is just one part of the effort. It's not like Nuland is acting by herself, a one woman agency - there are powerful USA agencies and actors as part of the foreign policy apparatus.
Nuland's current job is Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, which is the highest-ranking member of the US Foreign Service and fourth-highest person in the state department. 'There are powerful USA agencies involved wherever she goes' is tautological, but also not the actual argument, because most people raising Nuland don't actually know her current job or its roles, and only know her from Ukraine during Maidan due to the effort of the Russians to paint her involvement as part of a coup.
In practice, her current job is to be the eye of Sauron and go look at whatever the biggest flashy thing is, only instead of the Sauron it's the US State Department, and instead of ringwraiths it's still the State Department, and in terms of powerful USA agencies in wartorn countries, the State Department, isn't.
Nuland going to a country is generally to endorse what lower functionaries have already done, in which she has no generative role in change, or in a contingency going to represent the Secretary of State and the POTUS, in which case she's also not the generator of change. Nuland doesn't set policy, she executes it, which is different from the power Bismarck had in his heyday.
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Nominative determinism. What foreign policy goals couldn't she accomplish with a name like Victory New Land?
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Yeah its pretty dumb once you look into it, as she visits a lot of places
It is pretty interesting but i guess she was pretty prominent leading up to the ukraine war
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Well, it's a lot easier to accept your identified rival is amazing than to admit your repeated incompetence. Better an adversary Bismarck to your own Wilhelm.
Nuland is a meme at this point. Most of the people who know of her leaked call don't even understand that the context of the discussion was Yanukovych's own offer to bring the opposition politicians she's referring to into his own government as a compromise. It was a manning discussion on the viability of Yanukovych's own future government, which only became his future replacement due to him buckling down to Putin's pressure to begin shooting the opposition, which is another point most people don't care to remember.
Yeah, like, it's totally shocking the ambassador there when talking about a political change in the country to mention...prominent opposition politicians? If there was a tape of a Russian diplomat talking about Trump winning and then mentioning a bunch of likely Cabinet nominees, I wouldn't think that was proof of some weird underhanded plan for a coup.
Like, am I sure she was happy about ole' Yanukovych imploding? Sure.
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To revisit the question and break it apart-
The proximal cause is a breakdown of negotiations over the integration of the paramilitary RSF under the SAF. The SAF wanted this in a short time frame, within years. The RSF wanted a longer time frame, like a decade, but practically never.
These negotiations have been western backed, and in a sense western pushed, since the 2019 but especially the 2021 coup, as a sort of condition for international legitimacy / foreign support. One of the key western interests / some background reasons for their role is the negotiation is the context of Darfur. On top of being a massive humanitarian tragedy in and of itself, it's humanitarian crisis like this that can drive regional instability to collapse governments and see migration flows from Africa towards Europe. Consolidating control of all the military forces under a single military, and that military under the civilian government, is a key point in reigning in warlordism that fuels these conflicts, where profit-maximizing warlords continue their wars without state backing.
In practice, however, Hemetti and the RSF are the warlord being reigned in, since the paramilitary militia are more of a threat to stability than the formal military, and the consolidation of the RSF under the SAF would have decisively subordinated control of his personal economic interests (the RSF-controlled gold and other things) under Burhan and the SAF.
This is the fundamental crux of the current coup / civil war: the RSF Warlord had his interests under threat. A coup attempt makes sense here, because if it succeeds, Hemetti gets even more power and wealth, and if it stalls, then in the negotiations that follow Hemetti can secure concessions that protect his interests.
IF you want to frame this as the west's fault, then having negotiations that put Hemetti's interests at risk is the western contribution to the crisis. The inevitable tankie framing will be that the US forced Hemetti's hand, and that the US drove the crisis, and that the crisis would end if the US used it's great power and influence to force a ceasefire for the good of the people, and only American/western greed and amorality prevents it.
This is generally where I tell people to stop being cultural chauvinists and thinking it's all about the West.
The West was not issuing ultimatums. The West does not control the military autocrat who couped the previous military junta who couped the previous military junta. All negotiations put people's interests at stake- that's what negotiatiosn are. But Hemetti and the RSF were not in a 'coup or die' situation. There was no ticking clock or irreversible end to negoations. Burhan was not, to my knowledge, actually about to militarily move against his Deputy. This is a conflict of choice between two men with their own motives and interests. There is an ambitious warlord who made his wealth and power inflicting great misery and suffering who wanted to not just protect, but expand, his personal power and wealth, in a conflict with another ambitious warlord who made his wealth and power inflicting great misery and suffering in the process of expanding his personal power and wealth.
Neither is an American puppet. They are their own men. And they are causing a mountain of misery in the foreseeable future, as they have supported in the past to varying degrees. They are both quite willing to inflict more for their own advantage, and the logic of the conflict- and factors in it to date- suggest a sustained civil war, not the ever-optimistic 'we can compel negotiations that will end the conflict in our favor' that the RSF seems to have been betting on.
I have, many times, said I have a dim view of any war strategy that rests on the premise of 'and then the enemy will lose the will to fight.' Nothing I see from the SAF suggests that Burhan intends to give up, or that other powers can make him. Multiple announced cease fires have failed, and each failure decreases the chance for the next.
The coup will likely continue into a civil war. There are factors that could limit it, and with the grace of god may they prevail, but if the SAF can retake the capital, the obvious next step for them is to take the gold mines and RSF economic interests, and those interests can pay for a lot of mercenaries and such to resist that. It will be bloody and expensive, but that's a cost both men are likely willing to pay, over American objection.
The russian-gold connection, and reported Wagner ties, are not central / drivers of western policy in Sudan. That is a red herring.
There are certainly RSF-Russian ties that the US and the West does not like, but there are many things about the SAF and its ties that the West does not like. The SAF-junta is not a US-backed government in the sense that any alternative to it is a zero-sum loss of American interests. The SAF is a US-backed government in that it is the government, effectively, and in negotiations with the US and other international parties for international acceptance. The US is not Sudan's political/military/economic guarantor. If anything, Egypt is- and while Egypt is a US ally, it's not a Russian foe.
There are some definite RSF-Russian elements that are worth noting here- the RSF opening phase of the conflict has some obvious (though not exclusively) Russian strategic thinking influences, from the role of opening misinformation for information space disruption, the opening targetting/capture of Egyptian forces to create a decision paralysis to delay/disrupt/prevent external intervention, and the overarching strategy of a smaller military power trying to use first-mover advantage and a selective call for negotiations/cease fire from a position of advantage. The RSF timing, down to the point of the Eid Holiday at the end of the first week of fighting, when the pre-planned operations would climax, but the counter-attacks wouldn't have time to marshal, and the foreign diplomatic pressure and religious Eid holiday would increase chance for a natural compellence of cease fire, are all characteristic of how the Russians hybrid warfare theory suggest things should go, and the Wagner ties are absolutely a vector to support that.
But at this time, there's no real indication the Russians, or Wagner, or directly involved or orchestrating or anything else. Framing this as a Russia-US proxy war overestimates the relevance of both sides.
It also overstates the attachment other parties have to either side. If the SAF wins, the US continues relations with the military junta that launched a coup. If the RSF wins, the US would... likely continue relations with the military junta that launched a coup. The US, and western, interest isn't in who rules the country, it's what who rules the country does, and Hemetti would quite likely continue the charade of a military-backed transitionary government in indefinite negotiations for an eventual transition to civilian government that patriotic military leader would oh-so-happily lead.
Whether that person is Hemetti or Burhan really doesn't matter to the west, though Hemetti's personal ties to Russia might be an irritant, and the RSF is a bit more detestable to western sensitivities than the SAF due to the involvement in Darfur and the ill-discipline with how western diplomats have been treated. However, the west cares far more that Sudan doesn't generate a humanitarian crisis that causes regional instability and migration flows.
Sudan is generating a humanitarian crisis that will cause regional instability and migration flows.
The immediate Western and most foreign nation priorities priorities is getting diplomats and citizens out of what is rapidly becoming a humanitarian disaster zone. Fighters (allegedly, but not necessarily exclusively, from RSF) have been robbing diplomats or attacking refugee convoys as the leave the capital. Diplomatic evacuations have been in the scale of hundreds; thousands to tens of thousands of foreign nationals are in the country. Diplomatic evacuations are ongoing, but the risk to thousands of citizens is quite possibly going to generate calls for foreign intervention in some form.
And risk is real, because infrastructure is contested or failing. The Khartoum capital airport has been shut by fighting since the coup, and it's a 800km / 500 mile drive to the port, which means if you don't have the gas for that there's a good chance you're escaping the war-torn capital on foot. Internet is failing across the country, and foreign aid groups already in the country say they're not able to get humanitarian supplies in, which means there's both less to feed people AND less ability to coordinate it.
And, of course, there's that minor thing about the civil war, where one side was THE designated force for organizing militia to terrorize the country side and steal everything of value. Including, allegedly, robbing evacuating diplomats, kidnapping non-involved soldiers of foreign militaries, and other charming examples of care.
It's liable to be bad. Really, really bad. And I have no faith or confidence in the ability of the West to compel a ceasefire and return to negotiations, and every fear that failure to do so will see the SAF grind the RSF out of the capital and then go for the RSF's economic heart, even if it takes them years of humanitarian crisis to do so.
I have a brother who is currently in South Sudan doing bible translation work. Is South Sudan getting involved in this, or likely to get involved?
Not for the moment though they have been dealing with their own ongoing issues involving ethnic conflicts in the Congo spilling over the border (remember Kony?) and now the sudden influx of refugees from Sudan which could turn ugly seeing as the whole independence movement/referendum was essentially about the predominantly Christian southern districts not wanting to be bound to a military junta posing as an Islamic theocracy.
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In the short term, only by refugees. Both factions are contesting the capital. The refugees fleeing there will need somewhere to go. Those with family south will probably head there.
In the longer term, the threat of spill-over violence increases. The likely trajectory of an extended civil war, if that happens, is that the RSF sustains itself by hiring / funding militia groups. Those groups are liable to not only come from across the region, but ignore things like political borders if seeking safe havens, recruitment, or opportunistic targets.
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I'd lean towards that the initial seizures of personnel froze any immediate response ability, and while that was resolving the impetus to support / enable foreign diplomatic evacuations and the imminent refugee crisis took priority. At this point, the capital seems undecided, and so the way the conflict will shift within a month is unclear, and so focusing on the refugees streaming towards the border is an easier effort than an unclear intervention.
As with the west as a whole, Egypt is less invested in the man than in what the man-in-charge is willing to do. The RSF is liable to be as willing to keep supporting Egypt vis-a-vis Ethiopia as the SAF.
I'm less convinced about the Gulf Arab argument. There is various reporting that the UAE in particular is connected, but the quality varies, Egypt is funded more by Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi's aren't as clearly involved/interested. That's not saying you can't find connections, but in this part of the world you will always find connections, especially when the RSF was the literal gold dealer.
Military juntas don't dominate the state for 30+ years by lacking internal espionage services. While the RSF is a rich bunch of militia groups it's still a bunch of militia groups, with poor discipline already on show, and while the SAF may be a poor army it's still an army with heavy equipment and the resources of the state. The RSF seems to be focusing extremely heavily on the capital, and the movement of RSF forces from their usual areas to the capital would have been pretty noticeable.
Once the Hemedti actually failed to take out Burhan in the first 24 hours, most of what we're seeing was predictable.
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And reports that Ethiopian cross border forces were defeated- did the RSF or the SAF do that?
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So your're saying its not about protecting the Sudan LGBTQ+ populations?
I'm half kidding of course, but thank you for the run down.
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